Who worked in my construction this week? Attendance and payment management

As the owner of a construction company, you should always view your workforce as an essential asset. Therefore, it is important to have data on the attendance of your workers: are they late or absent? Have they been absent due to illness or for personal reasons? How many workers does each outsourced crew have?

The absence of workers or poor accounting of attendance can not only increase your costs considerably but also delay the completion deadlines. When you take into account that being late in one stage has multiplier effects on the deadline of the others, or that not finishing work on time can mean large fines, these factors become critical.

Given these circumstances, there is no doubt that attendance and time tracking are crucial for effective employee management.

The construction industry is one of the most complex sectors to manage people. Among the challenges you face daily, we can name three situations that are more frequent and that are related to each other:

• Attendance: Control of work attendance is done on-site, that is, it is done through observation at the worksite. In general, it is the foreman or crew manager on the same work who keeps the record. When there are subcontracted crews, this control is carried out by the foreman of each one and the general manager of the work. Therefore, then you have to compare what the foreman says, and what the manager records.

Of course, in large-scale works, they may have a digital entry control (such as a fingerprint reader). This is an ideal situation since it uniquely identifies each person, their entry and exit times. But this is not always the case.

• Payment: It is directly related to attendance control; at the time of paying salaries to each of the workers, it is important to have accurate information, so that no more payments are made and also a correct estimate of costs can be made.
  
  
• Accidents: It is essential that the workers are insured, this supposes an extra cost, therefore the construction company must have an attendance record that allows it to verify that, in case of receiving an accident notice, the worker was really on the construction site.

This is where the need to know arises. How do you control the people who tell you they went to work, and the ones who went? Where do you keep the record? How do you solve the differences between site foremen and the general manager without it being a "he said and I said"?

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Now, to have an unequivocal view of the situation on the construction site, you need clear information, a single record, and an orderly system. To achieve this registration, you have multiple options. From the most traditional, how to make the employee sign a daily statement with the time of entry and exit, up to the most current, which can be to use an application with an iris reader or a fingerprint (as I mentioned before) to control the work time. At first, all are valid unless the labor authorities say otherwise. Whichever method you choose, you should ensure that it allows you to:

• Spend less time on payroll preparation: As a result, you'll be able to spend less time preparing payroll each month to focus more on your other jobs, and improve your company's overall productivity.
• Have an accurate idea of labor costs: When you monitor your employees' attendance, you can improve the accuracy of your labor costs in a way that they only get paid for the time they've spent working. This means that work time and attendance tracking can prevent situations where some employees will be late for work and/or leave the workplace early but will be paid without deductions.
• Avoid lawsuits against the company: In general, salary calculations are based on the time workers have worked. That's why if you don't keep track of time, you may face legal issues. Remember, failure to pay your employees the correct amount of compensation can expose your company to lawsuits.
• Streamline data storage: Record accuracy can also simplify data when tracking worker attendance.
• Inform your employees about their time records: When you track your workers' attendance, your employees need to access and monitor their schedule on their own, so they know how it may affect their job performance.
• Improve planning: Having control and a historical record of the resources used in previous projects allows you to make better estimates and plan for the future. Labor is a central resource in construction, so a correct estimate of it (number of personnel per job, deadlines, costs, etc.) will allow you to plan better.

Doing so can also help you handle an employee's attendance issues efficiently. Moreover, the information you get from attendance tracking can go a long way toward eliminating inefficiencies and other productivity issues.

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In conclusion and considering the reasons above, there is no question about how essential it is to track your employees' attendance and time in the workplace. Having control of who went to work and the payments that were made will help you avoid paying more in salaries, insurance, accident risks, lawsuits, etc., and, in the end, plan better and be more efficient.